1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to operating a rotation function of a terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus of rotating the orientation of the display of a portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
The popularity of portable terminals and their use both in various industrial fields and daily life is based in no small smart on their technological capability to support a plurality of specific user functions while being constructed with an ever-decreasing size and thickness to increase the easy of portability.
Recently, a portable terminal that integratedly supports various user functions has been constructed. Such portable terminal supports user functions while providing screens associated with each respective user function through a display unit. Accordingly, the user accesses a particular user function, while viewing a corresponding screen associated with the particular user function that is output on the display unit.
Meanwhile, a conventional portable terminal provides a function that can switch an orientation of a screen output by rotating the screen upon sensing the device has been rotated, or in the case where there is an actual keypad upon sliding out the keypad. Accordingly, the user may view the screen of the portable terminal in a vertical mode or a horizontal mode depending on a need. However, depending on the user, the user may not require a screen rotation function.
For example, a specific user may want to view a terminal screen in the vertical mode or in the horizontal mode even when the terminal was rotated. For example, the user might grip the device in a portrait position relative to his hand but still wish to see a particular object depicted in the landscape orientation. In this case, the user may set to turn off a rotation function so as not to apply the rotation function.
However, in a case where the user function provided by the terminal needs to be performed based on the rotation function, setting the device to turn off the rotation function as described above places a limitation to providing the user function in a normal manner, wherein the corresponding rotation function necessarily needs to be applied. Also, it is cumbersome for the user to go through settings to turn on or off the rotation function. Furthermore, most user's do not read through the user's manual with such detail that they even realize that the rotation function can be turned on or off.
In order to solve this problem, the terminal may be controlled to reset to turn on the rotation function; however, a rotation function setting menu requires multiple depth searches, and thus, controlling a menu setting whenever needed causes inconvenience of repeatedly performing complex multiple depth searches. Moreover, when the user does not remember where the rotation function setting menu is located, inconvenience to the user is even further increased.